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January 19, 2006

Being visible

At CPE on Monday we got to talking about visible signs of vocation: specifically, the clerical collar that many Christian
clergy wear. No one in my group wears the collar on Mondays
when we are in class together, though it turns out some of my
colleagues wear one on-call -- sometimes. Why only sometimes? The collar, they tell me, sends a complicated series of
messages (both to insiders and to outsiders), and one can't be
sure how those messages will be perceived or received. And there is also a question of whether wearing a symbol that sets one apart is the best
way to serve God, and whether the symbol's visibility feeds ego sometimes instead.

(Thanks to the blogosphere, these notions weren't new to me. Desertpastor's post What does a clerical collar say? asks some good questions, and Preston's terrific post
More on the clericals explores the dynamics of being a
wheelchair-bound priest and how the two signs, wheelchair and
clerical collar, send different messages to the hospital community
he serves.)

Neither Judaism nor Islam has an analogue to the clerical
collar, though my Muslim colleague and I joined the conversation by speaking about his beard and my kippah. In both of our traditions the markers of devoutness are democratic. They're not limited to clergy, but are symbols of piety that are open to everyone. (Well, where "everyone" means "men." We'll come back to that.) Of course, beards can also be fashion statements, so
they're not necessarily religious symbols. And being a part of his
face, his beard goes with him everywhere. My yarmulke is a
little different. Unlike a clerical collar, it's not a sign of ordination; but like my Christian colleagues with their collars, I wrestle with questions of when to wear a kippah, and why, and what it means when I do.

(Editorial note: the Yiddish word yarmulke and the
Hebrew word kippah mean the same thing: the
small round head-covering that some Jews wear as a sign of respect
in God's presence. Most sources agree that the Yiddish word comes
from the Aramaic yira malka, which means "awe of the
King," e.g. God -- though some claim the word derives from a Tartar term for "skullcap." The Hebrew word means "dome," as in the
head. Though the custom was historically a masculine one, these days -- at
least in liberal Judaism where I am spiritually at-home -- the kippah is an equal-opportunity phenomenon. Kippot come in a variety of
styles, and whether one's kippah is black suede,
rainbow-crocheted, or an embroidered pillbox hat speaks volumes.
But that's another post for another day; you can read a little bit
about the language of kippot
here if you're curious.)

I don't wear a kippah all the time. I wear one when I'm
explicitly "doing Jewish" -- when I'm in synagogue, when
I'm leading services or officiating at a lifecycle event, when I'm
teaching Hebrew school, and when I'm doing pastoral care work
(visiting congregants to offer counsel, or doing chaplaincy work at
the hospital). In other words, I wear one when I want to remind
myself that I'm doing God's work. I also wear a kippah when I'm on
retreat at Elat
Chayyim, or at a conference like the Biennial or Ohalah, when
my rabbinic-student identity is at the forefront.

Tractate Kiddushin 31a of the Talmud says that the purpose of
wearing a kippah is "to remind us of God, who is the Higher
Authority 'above us'." Wearing a kippah makes me mindful,
helps me bring blessing to what I'm doing, and reminds me to
sanctify the work of my hands. Of course, an argument could be made
that I'm always in God's presence, that I ought to bring blessing
even to secular activities like folding laundry and buying
groceries, and that every moment is worthy of sanctification. So
why don't I wear a kippah all the time?

The first reason is, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the
implication that I need a constant symbol on my head to remind me
of God's presence in my life. Shouldn't I be striving toward the
ability to maintain God-consciousness at all times without
a tangible reminder? Besides, I like marking my transitions into
Jewish time by donning a kippah. Others have had similar thoughts;
this page cites a cantor who "likes the enhanced feeling of
specialness that pulling the kippah out of his pocket and putting
it on his head gives him." And in her terrific essay "You Wear A Kippah?" writer Emily Wages says, "The moment each Friday evening when I put on my kippah is rich with
meaning. It is incredibly personal and private -- a metaphysical
instant in which I take a step closer to the divine." (It's a fantastic piece -- alas, not available on the internet, though it's collected in Yentl's Revenge, an anthology I highly recommend.)

The second reason is, I'm not sure I'm ready to be that
visible. Wearing a kippah invites projection and transference:
whatever people associate with "observant Jew,"
they'll put on my shoulders. Emily Wages writes about that too: "People assume that because I wear a kippah I must be
politically conservative," she writes. "Others assume that increased
religious observance signals the termination of independent thinking. She's wearing a kippah, it seems some think, therefore she must be a nationalistic drone." I'm not sure how I feel about being "out" as an observant Jew all the
time, about making this the most obvious thing people notice about
me. And people will notice. As the author of A Blessing On Your Head
notes,

Indeed, wearing a kippah is a big
statement, and obligates the wearer to live up to a certain
standard of behavior. A person has to think twice before cutting in
line at the bank, or berating an incompetent waiter. Wearing a
kippah makes one a Torah ambassador and reflects on all
Jews.

I don't feel much concern about cutting in
line at the bank, or tipping my waitstaff poorly. I like to think I
act ethically and kindly in most circumstances even without a
kippah. But what if I want to go out dancing? I see no personal
disjunction between wearing a yarmulke and putting on my
dancing duds, but others might, and I'm not sure I want to get
embroiled in explanations.

Part of my discomfort with the notion of wearing one all the time arises from the way
the kippah would set me apart from others in my community. In his essay In Defense of Wearing
a Yarmulke in Court, Baruch C. Cohen, Esq., writes, "I
proudly wear my Yarmulke in my legal practice, even though it
separates me from others. My identity as an observant Jew requires
a certain separateness." I respect his point of view, but I'm
not sure I share it. My Jewishness is built on a foundation of
connection and inclusivity. Any practice which marks me as obviously
different from my friends, neighbors, and loved ones is a practice
I want to consider carefully before I leap.

And I don't want to run the risk of substituting outward piety for the inner work I know I need to do.
Those who know me, know how important my Jewishness is to me.
They see it in the work I choose to do, in the way I
involve myself with my shul, in my blog.
I'd like my sense of connection with God and my
alignment with my tradition to come across to those who don't know
me, too -- but I'd rather have them come to discover those things
through the small actions and interactions that make up my days.
Wearing something that shouts, "Hey! Great Big Jew over here!"
feels like drawing attention to the externals, when what really
matters to me is how and whether my Judaism manifests from
the inside.

There are several reasons why I don't wear a kippah all the time. Gender isn't one of them, though. Unlike Sheree Curry, who wrote about her kippah envy,
I've never felt barred from observance because I'm a woman. I've
always belonged to congregations and communities where I could count
toward a minyan, read from Torah, and choose to take on practices like
tallit, tefillin, and kippah. I probably wouldn't wear a kippah (or don
tallit or tefillin -- or, for that matter, shorts and a tank top) in an
ultra-Orthodox context. I wouldn't want to flaunt my observance or to
make others uncomfortable. But the fact that wearing a kippah isn't
traditionally a woman's observance doesn't deter me from wearing one in appropriate settings...nor from choosing when and where I think the kippah is appropriate to wear.

While working on this post, I read several musings on this
subject, wanting to know how others had experienced these questions.
Rabbi Mark Hurvitz
explores his outwardly-visible Jewish practices
in this essay, explaining why he chooses to wear
tzitzit (ritual fringes) but not a kippah. Tzitzit, he
points out, have Biblical basis; the kippah is purely custom, and
would offer inaccurate clues about what he believes. (He says more
about that in
Why Avigail's father does not wear a kippah.)

Of all the essays I unearthed while writing this, my favorite is Rabbi Hershel
Matt's Covering my
Jewish Head. He begins by citing some excellent reasons for
expanding his kippah-wearing practice from times when he's
"doing Jewish" to all the moments of his life. But then
he points out some of the practice's pitfalls:

[How] dangerous is the possibility that wearing
a head covering may become so routine and automatic that I become
almost oblivious to its intended meaning, thus allowing what is
meant to be an act of piety to become utterly ineffective, and
allowing what are meant to be moments of holiness to lose their
force and even their frequency. Wearing a kippah constantly, I run
the risk of reducing the distinction between the holy and the
profane--and not by raising the latter to the former.

In addition to the peril of routine, there is the peril of
self-righteous display: of always appearing to say, "Look at
me: how pious I am!" It is true, of course, that peril lies
also with the onlooker, who may be rationalizing his own lack of
piety by projecting it on to the kippah-covered Jew; I dare not
deny, however, the reality of this peril which accompanies me when
I publicly wear a kippah. The effort to cultivate consciousness of
God's presence, worthy and indeed crucial as this is, is no
guarantee against self-consciousness, and self-consciousness runs
the risk of becoming self-righteousness and self-display.

Worn every day, the kippah runs the risk of
becoming mundane, thereby diminishing the special God-consciousness
the practice is meant to inculcate. And, like any practice that
puts one in the spotlight, wearing a kippah all the time can feed
the ego, turning a practice meant to be "all about God"
into one that's "all about me."

It's possible that some day I'll
change my mind on this. If I do, you can expect another long
kippah-centric blogpost explaining my shift in thinking! Until
then, I'll just keep collecting them in lots of pretty patterns and colors.
(Hey, even if I don't wear one all the time, I want to be able to
color-coordinate.) And I'd love to hear from those of you who have navigated this question, or similar ones -- where are you at? How has your practice shifted over time? What does wearing (or not-wearing) a kippah, or tzitzit, or a clerical collar, or monastic's habit, mean to you?

TrackBack

» Being visible from Public Quaker
It's nice to find a post as gently reflective as this one, and the comments are great too. It's the Velveteen Rabbi talking about being visible as a religious person because of wearing a kippa. Being visible as a Quaker... [Read More]

Tracked on January 25, 2006 at 10:29 AM

» Being visible from Public Quaker
It's nice to find a post as gently reflective as this one, and the comments are great too. It's the Velveteen Rabbi talking about being visible as a religious person because of wearing a kippa. Being visible as a Quaker... [Read More]

Tracked on March 25, 2006 at 03:11 AM

Comments

Being visible

At CPE on Monday we got to talking about visible signs of vocation: specifically, the clerical collar that many Christian
clergy wear. No one in my group wears the collar on Mondays
when we are in class together, though it turns out some of my
colleagues wear one on-call -- sometimes. Why only sometimes? The collar, they tell me, sends a complicated series of
messages (both to insiders and to outsiders), and one can't be
sure how those messages will be perceived or received. And there is also a question of whether wearing a symbol that sets one apart is the best
way to serve God, and whether the symbol's visibility feeds ego sometimes instead.

(Thanks to the blogosphere, these notions weren't new to me. Desertpastor's post What does a clerical collar say? asks some good questions, and Preston's terrific post
More on the clericals explores the dynamics of being a
wheelchair-bound priest and how the two signs, wheelchair and
clerical collar, send different messages to the hospital community
he serves.)

Neither Judaism nor Islam has an analogue to the clerical
collar, though my Muslim colleague and I joined the conversation by speaking about his beard and my kippah. In both of our traditions the markers of devoutness are democratic. They're not limited to clergy, but are symbols of piety that are open to everyone. (Well, where "everyone" means "men." We'll come back to that.) Of course, beards can also be fashion statements, so
they're not necessarily religious symbols. And being a part of his
face, his beard goes with him everywhere. My yarmulke is a
little different. Unlike a clerical collar, it's not a sign of ordination; but like my Christian colleagues with their collars, I wrestle with questions of when to wear a kippah, and why, and what it means when I do.